From the notoriety which the circumstance gained, an inquiry was instituted into the affair, and, by an inspection of the rifled tomb, the guilt of the grave-digger was made apparent, and he is now expiating his crime as a convicted felon. From the information I acquired respecting the physician, it appeared that he overcame the shock which he had received, though he had passed through many fits of delirium, and had suffered from a fever which had often threatened the extinction both of his reason and of his life.*

DUELLING:

A THING OF THE PAST.

Now that duelling may be said to be extinct, or nearly so, in every country aspiring to civilised usages, it becomes curious and interesting, as a matter of history, to look back on times when the practice was all but universal, and to observe the reasons for its decline.

Private encounters in mortal combat for the settlement of disputes, was not known in ancient Greece or Rome. Several examples are certainly found, both in sacred and profane history, of champions being delegated from opposing armies to fight with each other, preliminarily to the general mêlée. But these cases had no analogy with the more modern duels. They were always between public enemies, and not between private friends or fellow-citizens. The inhabitants of Rome or Athens did not slay each other upon points of honour. Cæsar relates that two of his officers having a dispute, mutually defied each other-not to single combat, but to shew which of them should perform the most glorious action in the succeeding battle;

*Every circumstance related in the above article is strictly true, no addition whatever being made to the facts as they really occurred, and the tale, however romantic it may appear, being quite well known in Berlin.

and that one of them, after beating back the enemy, was on the point of falling a victim, when he was rescued by his adversary. A similar instance of heroic emulation is mentioned of two of the officers in Alexander the Great's army. This is certainly a much more estimable way of arranging a personal difference, than by retiring into a corner, and committing an inglorious murder. It would be vain to pretend that the Romans and Greeks were not as brave as the modern Europeans, and that on such an account the duel was not in use amongst them; nor can it be predicated of the Turks and Tatars, who, though proverbially reckless of human life, have never adopted the custom.

Duelling sprang into existence among the ancient Gauls and Germans during the barbarity of the middle ages. Law being for a time obscured, the sword became the engine of arbitration. The military education of the feudal chiefs and their retainers, tended to perpetuate and confirm the practice of settling private quarrels by fighting; and at length duelling was actually sanctioned to a certain degree by legal and ecclesiastical institutes. It would seem that the law, being unable to put down private fighting altogether, adopted the next best, and placed the practice under regulation. Hence judicial combats were held in every state for the settlement of civil questions. Even the rights of the church, its domains and revenues, were subjected to this singular ordeal, and sometimes the zeal of an ecclesiastic carried him into the lists as a champion. By a statute of William the Conqueror, the inferior clergy were forbidden to fight without the consent of their diocesan. But in the generality of cases, the cause of the church and of females was committed to the care of some sturdy warrior, who was ready to risk his life for the benefit of others.

Judicial combats or duels are to be distinguished from the tournaments which were so much in vogue in the days of chivalry. The latter were somewhat after the manner of the gladiatorial games in ancient Rome, except that, instead of fighting by the hands of slaves, the

knights fought by their own. We have an exposition of the purposes and ceremonies of tournaments in the code of laws for their regulation, drawn up by Réné of Anjou, king of Sicily and Jerusalem, who, being despoiled of his dominions, found ample leisure for this important purpose. In these singular pandects he lays it down as a fundamental rule, that jousts and tournaments are to be held only in honour of the ladies. They alone were to inspect the arms and distribute the prizes; and if any knight or esquire should speak evil of any lady, the other combatants were to maul the libeller with their swords, until the assembled fair ones judged the drubbing sufficient. Tournaments were therefore strictly of the nature of spectacles or games, and could be held only by a prince or great baron. Knights and esquires flocked from all parts of Christendom, whenever one was announced, to tilt with and slay each other for the honour and gratification of their respective loves, until the death of Henry II., king of France, killed at a tournament held at Paris in 1559, brought the usage into great odium, and tended finally to suppress it.

Single combats or duels were upon a very different principle. They were for the redress of wrongs or restitution of rights, being mainly founded on the belief, that God would support the party who had justice on his side. They took place under the immediate sanction of the king, or the superior lord, and of his court of justice. When one was determined upon, the two adverse parties, or their authorised champions, appeared on the assigned day within a ring of eighty feet long and forty broad, guarded by sergeants-at-arms. They were on horseback, and furnished with all the offensive and defensive armour of the time. They were strictly enjoined to carry a crucifix or the image of a saint upon their banners. The heralds arranged the spectators around the ring, all of whom were on foot, no one being permitted to come on horseback under the penalty of losing his steed; and if not noble, of having one ear cut off.

The presiding officer, accompanied by a priest, caused

each of the combatants to be sworn upon a crucifix that the right was on his side, and that he bore upon him no enchantments or magic arms. The illustrious St George was invoked for the truth of the oath, though even his redoubted name was not always satisfactory; and the persons of the duellists were often scrupulously searched for charms and bewitched weapons-a firm belief in the existence and efficacy of which was a grand ingredient in the character of the true chevalier. When the preliminary ceremonies were gone through, they were ordered to charge, and the mortal struggle commenced. The conquered party was accounted infamous, and if he were not killed in the fight, was generally hanged or ignominiously mutilated. His arms were seized for the benefit of the president, the prevailing maxim being, 'the dead must be wrong, the conquered ought to suffer.'

When burghers or other inferior persons adventured on a duel, their weapons were limited to clubs, wherewith they beat each other's heads until victory declared for one of the parties. If the skull of the craven or defeated person were not so battered and smashed as to have caused death, he was, without any delay, hanged by the neck, whilst the conqueror was carried home in triumph, and enjoyed the spoils of the defunct.

These judicial duels were equally for grave and petty causes. A dispute about a trifling sum of money, an accusation of murder, robbery, or perjury, a contested title to honours and estates, equally afforded legitimate ground for these sanguinary conflicts. By an ordinance in the time of Louis le Jeune of France, A.D. 1168, the duel was restricted to cases embracing at least the sum of five sous, or pence of that period. The existence of such a regulation is sufficient proof how universal such combats must have been. But about the middle of the sixteenth century, they became less frequent, in consequence of various restrictions being enacted respecting them. They were no longer permitted except in cases of grave import, where proof of a sufficient nature was unattainable.

But, in addition to these legalised and solemn appeals to arms, a mischievous and restless race of mortals ran up and down the world in search of duels, without any cause whatever save an insatiable thirst for blood. Such was the famous Bayard, the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, who was ready at all times to fly over half of Europe to lay prostrate an adversary with whose name even he was unacquainted. Such, also, was one Jean de Bourbon, who published a carte, setting forth, that 'he would go into England, and fight to the death to relieve himself from listlessness.' Another, holding the high office of seneschal in Hainault, challenged the whole world to fight at Conchy, in Flanders; but being sadly disappointed that no adversary appeared, he publicly vowed to go forth, armed cap-à-pie, and wreak his pugnacity on the natives of Spain. What became of him is not accurately known, but it is probable that Cervantes had him in his eye when he portrayed the most valiant Don Quixote.

The rage for duelling, in fact, was so great, and so much mixed up with the passions of the middle ages, that we actually find one proposed between a father and a son. Adolphus, son of Arnold Duke of Guelderland, wished to dethrone his father, asserting that he had enjoyed the sweets of sovereignty long enough. The parent, on the contrary, challenged his son to mortal combat, in presence of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, as liege lord. The unnatural youth immediately accepted the challenge; but the Duke of Burgundy judged it better to incorporate the disputed territory into his own dukedom, and thus avoid so horrible an exhibition. This singular transaction took place in 1470. In 1495, Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, fought a duel with Claude de Batre, a simple French knight, in presence of all the electors and princes of the Germanic Diet; and though he was fortunate enough to cleave his adversary's skull, he risked, in so absurd a contest, the very existence of the House of Austria.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, duels under the sanction and with the ceremonies of the law, may be